Providentially, though our family was uprooted both emotionally and physically by our move to Trailer Village, we were plunked down in the vicinity of a pair of God’s quiet servants. A few doors down from our 'new' home, on the opposite side of the street closer to the park entrance, lived Jimmy and Jeanine Williams. Two things I remember clearly about this older couple: they introduced my mother to the local Assembly of God pastor and his wife, and they introduced our entire family to the spicy pleasure of greasy tacos. I remember the former because we started attending church, a turn of events that profoundly affected the rest of my life. I remember the latter because -- for reasons known only to the Creator -- memories often travel on the back of food.
It seemed to me that Jimmy and Jeanine were a good deal older than Mom, but by how many years I can't say. As I was barely school age, all adults were old. To me they were ancient -- ideal grandparent figures. Jimmy had finished a 20 year career tour in the United States Marine Corps. As Trailer Village was less than a mile from the back entrance to Camp Pendleton, any number of residents had connections with either the Navy or Marine Corps. Both Jimmy and Jeanine had gray or graying hair. Jimmy's was getting thin. Both wore glasses, both were solid and stocky. At some point, the Williams noticed the new family down the street and opened their hearts and home to a noisy, awkward group of kids and their mother. Tacos at their home are one of the first meals I remember. Other meals from my early childhood were more in keeping with my Mom’s Wyoming farm heritage. I remember meat and potatoes and canned vegetables. Consequently, tacos were a foreign and exotic treat. There we would sit, all huddled around the tiny, circular dining table in the Williams trailer. How they managed to fit in five additional people is a wonder.
The ingredients were in various bowls in the center of the table. The process was simple: take a tortilla and load it up. Wonder Bread was my frame of reference, so the concept of a tortilla was baffling at first. Tacos can cover a whole gamut of ingredients; the Williams variety was quite simple: corn tortillas heated in some kind of oil until hot but not hard, ground beef (not lean), cheddar cheese, tomatoes, and lettuce. Jimmy, Jeanine and Mom also made use of something called ‘hot sauce’, a pungent reddish-brown liquid in a small bottle. A sample of the stuff warned me off for years. Although middling on the scale of hot sauces, to my tongue it was fiery. My alternative salsa was ketchup, no doubt repulsive to purists (and to me now), but ketchup went on a LOT of things in my childhood. In those days, cooking oil usually meant lard or Crisco. The Better Homes and Gardens cookbook recommended meat 'with good fat marbling for enhanced flavor’. Cheddar -- as it is now -- was a rather oily cheese. This made eating tacos an oily, messy proposition. While munching on one end, the other end had to be held over the plates (usually paper) so the combined greasy residue from the meat, tortilla, and cheese dripping from the other end would be safely collected. Each bite squeezed several drops out. I found it fascinating to aim for the same spot, so that by the end of the meal, I had a nice, round puddle which congealed into an opaque yellowish-white mass. It was fortunate that none of us were aware of the contribution such a meal would make to our cholesterol levels. The pleasure of eating is vastly diminished when every bite is evaluated for fat (saturated or not), sodium, sugar, carbohydrates, and calories. To this day, tacos remain a favorite meal, though long ago I graduated from ketchup to Pace Picante sauce and more recently to a delightful home-made salsa.
Simple hospitality. Never overestimate the impact of a friendly meal or two on a small child. My journey towards heaven started out on a road paved with greasy corn tortillas.
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